Auckland actor Fasitua Amosa is a man of many roles. He’s a Samoan chief and the title “Faiumu” connects him back to his grandfather’s family on Savai’i. He’s the deputy chair of the Whau Local Board in west Auckland, and the voice of Auckland Transport on its public transport network. He is a respected, versatile actor – and co-vice-president of actors’ union Equity NZ – who most recently played the Duke of Albany in Michael Hurst’s Auckland Theatre Company production of King Lear.
On television, after starring in 2004 series The Insider’s Guide to Happiness, he’s become one of those familar faces via guest and supporting roles in shows such as Dirty Laundry and Fresh Eggs. His biggest small-screen role, though, has been as one of fraternal wrestling duo the Wild Samoans who were “uncles” to a young Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in Young Rock, the American sitcom about the star’s childhood.
He’s a director, too, about to take a brand-new version of UPU, the vibrant poetry-performance show, on a North Island tour this month.
But two decades ago, when Amosa decided he was going to be an actor, it confirmed his aura as the rebel of the family. As the middle of five sons, he had learnt to do his own thing.
“I was often told I was too young to be doing what the older brothers were doing, and too old to be doing what my little brothers were doing,” he says.
“I was like a lot of middle kids, floating around entertaining myself. So I earned the reputation of being a bit of a black sheep. If anyone in the family was going to do anything out of the ordinary, it was most likely to be me. ‘That’s such a typical Fasi thing to do.’ If I tried something new, ‘Oh, that’s Fasi.’ So when I said I wanted to be an actor, everyone was, ‘Ah, classic Fasi. Walk in the direction of a storm’.”
Amosa was born in Wellington in 1981 to his mother Henga and father Asora. The family, deeply engaged with the Pacific Island Presbyterian Church in Newtown, moved to Dunedin when he was 3. His father, a land surveyor from Samoa who drove buses in Wellington, had a calling to become a minister and studied theology at the University of Otago for three years. “Then Dad must have got another calling,” laughs Amosa, “to go to South Canterbury.”
The Amosas settled in Pleasant Point, a farming town near Timaru, for five years. Amosa has only good things to say of that time, even if it meant he and his brothers acquired a new way of talking: “too well-spoken … very pālagi.”
When the family moved to Glen Eden in Auckland and Amosa started attending Kelston Boys’ High School, he went a little quiet.
“I had never been around so many brown faces in my life and it was a shock. I couldn’t understand what they were saying even though I looked like them. When I talked, you could see from the looks on their faces that whatever was coming out of my mouth did not match. I think they thought I was posh.”
With Asora working all-hours on church commitments, Amosa’s mum was the boss of the boys.
“Mum was the main person, so whatever Mum was doing, I was doing,” says Amosa. “I was domesticated. I knew how to use the washing machine. At family reunions, people say, ‘Your mother was the enforcer.’ It’s funny when you hear these stories from your cousins and aunties but it always sounds like a different person from the mother I know.”
When Amosa began his three-year degree at Unitec’s School of Performing and Screen Arts in 2000, his mother, in particular, was supportive of her so-called black sheep.
“Mum’s whole thing was whatever we wanted to do in life, be thorough, be dedicated. Do it well or don’t do it at all.”
When he entered Unitec, Amosa and Stacey Leilua were the only Pasifika students. Twenty years later, they worked together in Young Rock. Leilua was Johnson’s mother and Amosa was his “uncle”, WWF wrestler Sika Anoa’i. “So it was a nice full circle for us.”
Amosa struggled after graduating in 2002. For some time, the closest he got to the stage was working the bar at Auckland’s Silo Theatre.
“A busy year was having five auditions,” he recalls. “In contrast, some of my pālagi friends were getting auditions every week. It was disheartening, but I had just come out of drama school so I felt I was at the bottom and starting out.”
Amosa was convinced his fortunes would change.
“I am not that religious now but one thing I reflect on is having a faith-based upbringing really helped my belief that the industry would turn around and start looking at brown people and diversity would become a thing.
“My dad keeps talking about how Pasifika was the last untapped wave of opportunities. It got into my head that the new trend has to be Pacific people. Every time nothing happened, I was like, ‘The ship’s got to turn around at some point. We are already part of the furniture in sport; sooner or later we are going to be part of the furniture in the arts’.”
And that is exactly what has happened over the past 20 years.
“Now, there are lots of people who are trained, who have the ability, and lots of stories are now calling for authenticity,” he says. “Before, I was like yay, it’s just me and I’ll get all the jobs, but now there is so much talent and I am really glad.”
The poetry-performance show UPU was born out of a 2015 work, My Own Darling, by Auckland poet Grace Taylor. Starring Taylor, Amosa and Gaby Solomona and directed by Mia Blake, it received such a strong response, Taylor and Amosa reunited to create the first iteration of UPU (Samoan for “word”), poems performed by a group of actors. Amosa directed it for the Matariki season at Auckland’s Basement Theatre in 2018.
UPU was enhanced with a soundscape, costumes, a light show and choreography for a new staging by the Silo at the Auckland Arts Festival in March 2020, just before the festival was cancelled due to Covid.
UPU re-appeared at the 2021 Kia Mau Festival, winning Amosa the best director prize at the capital’s Theatre Awards. Its lineup of seven actors, which includes the venerable Nathaniel Lees, return in this new show, featuring nearly 50 poems by writers from across Oceania – Aotearoa and the Pacific region. The poems address an array of issues, including religion, family, colonisation and climate change.
Each performance opens with Selina Tusitala Marsh’s Samoan Star Chant for Matariki, a seven-stanza work first used in the Basement days.
“It’s a great way to open,” says Amosa. “Each stanza is a star calling out. It’s very evocative. You are about to hear from all over the Pacific. Why not start with the stars and come down?”
Amosa’s other life is in local body politics in the Whau Local Board, which includes New Lynn, Blockhouse Bay and Avondale, where he lives with his partner, Danielle Kelly, and their children, Isaac, 2, and Micah, 3 months.
First elected in 2019, and re-elected last year, he now serves as deputy chair. “Part of the thing was to try and get a younger voice on board,” he says. “There are so many young people who aren’t involved in politics but that leaves all the older people making decisions that [the young] are going to walk into.”
Improving public transport is one of Amosa’s top priorities, to reduce emissions. He recently got rid of the enormous diesel ute he bought three years ago – “I’d thought, I’m a man, I need a ute” – for an e-bike, which sits much better with his values. “I barely drove the ute because every time I got into it, I couldn’t justify driving this giant thing around.”
At this stage, juggling acting and directing with his council duties is “manageable” but he is considering his options.
“If I did think about running for something like council, I’d have to make a decision,” Amosa says. “I am busy but I do put my hand up a lot. Am I ready to give up acting for a while? Or is my career in the arts starting to bear fruit, so which way should I focus? At the level I am working at the moment, it is manageable but going further than that, it will have to be one or the other.
“More people working in the arts should run for council,” he adds. “When I sit around the table I can see why creative people need to get into governance even if just for a time. The way we collaborate and the way we work is very beneficial. Sometimes the boardroom can be quite corporate in style. We need to foster an environment of creativity to come up with solutions.”
UPU: Gisborne War Memorial Theatre, Oct 6-7; Theatre Royal, New Plymouth, Oct 12; Sir Howard Morrison Centre, Rotorua, Oct 18; Addison Theatre-Baycourt, Tauranga, Oct 25; Toitoi Opera House, Hastings, Oct 28.
